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Joséphine de Beauharnais bought the manor house in April 1797 for herself and her husband, General Napoléon Bonaparte. The future Napoléon I of France was at that time away fighting the Egyptian Campaign. Malmaison was a run-down estate, seven miles (12 km) west of central Paris that encompassed nearly 150 acres (0.61 km2) of woods and meadows.

When he came back from Egypt, Bonaparte was angry at Joséphine for buying such an expensive house. She had expected him to bring back a lot of money from the Egyptian campaign. She had paid well over 300,000 francs for the house and it needed extensive renovations. She spent a lot of money fixing it. Malmaison would bring great happiness to the Bonapartes. Joséphine's daughter, Hortense would call it "a delicious spot".

Joséphine worked hard to transform the large estate into "the most beautiful and curious garden in Europe. She wanted it to be a model of good cultivation". She located rare and exotic plants and animals to enhance the gardens. Joséphine wrote: "I wish that Malmaison may soon become the source of riches for all [of France]"...

In 1800, Joséphine built a heated orangery large enough for 300 pineapple plants. Five years later she ordered the building of a greenhouse. It was heated by a dozen coal-burning stoves. From 1803 until her death in 1814 she cultivated nearly 200 new plants in France for the first time.

The property became famous for its rose garden. Empress Joséphine had the Belgian artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840) record her roses (and lilies). Prints of these works sell quite well, even today. She created an extensive collection of rose. She gathered plants from her native Martinique and from other places around the world. She grew some 250 varieties of roses. From the foreword to Jardin de la Malmaison (1803):

You have gathered around you the rarest plants growing on French soil....as we inspect them in the beautiful gardens of Malmaison, an impressive reminder of the conquests of your illustrious husband...

After her divorce from Napoléon, Joséphine received Malmaison in her own right, along with a pension of 5 million francs a year, and remained there until her death in 1814. After his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 Napoléon returned to the house before his exile to the island of Saint Helena.